What Schundler Said

Published: July 7, 2001

Bret D. Schundler's remarks at a news conference in Trenton yesterday afternoon, as recorded by The New York Times:

What makes it possible for me and other, let's say, pro-choice Republicans to come together is respect for each other, respect for the idea of compromise and consensus. Jim McGreevey doesn't believe in compromise and consensus and he doesn't believe in respect. He has said that anybody who adheres to Catholic teaching is an extremist, unfit for public office. He has, in effect, created a religious test that would take us back to before John F. Kennedy's presidency, saying that anyone who adheres to Catholic teaching should not be in public office. He doesn't believe in the idea of respectful discourse, he doesn't believe in the idea of compromise on the basis of consensus. What he believes in is creating a religious test that says, if you don't think of things exactly as I do, you should not be in public life at all.

Now that, to me, is a little bit more akin to the way things are in Iran than the way they are here in the United States. I don't think Americans like intolerance. I don't think they want to elect an ayatollah. . . .''

Q. Do you think that likening Jim McGreevey to an ayatollah is perhaps demonizing him?

A. think the issue is, he has demonized an entire population for believing as they do in the value of all human life. Now to me, that is, if you say what is it that makes Iran Iran, it's the fact that there is a religious test to even possess the full rights of citizenship. If you don't share the religious viewpoint of the power, let's say, of those in authority in Iran, you are persecuted, and you are denied full public participation in the life of that society. That appears to me to be what Jim McGreevey is suggesting. So we have an individual here who is trying to establish a religious test for whether or not someone can hold office. And I think it is fully inappropriate for American public life.